


Always Take Me In

by Elleth



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Backstory, Bathing/Washing, Dreamworld, Finnish Mythology & Folklore, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Second Adventure, magic injury, physical injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-02 08:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18807043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/pseuds/Elleth
Summary: When Lalli confronts his past and narrowly avoids disaster, it is up to Emil to keep both of them alive long enough to find help to defeat the creature that haunts them.





	Always Take Me In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tentacledicks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tentacledicks/gifts).



> Thank you for the prompts; you were a joy to write for, and I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

If Emil noticed one thing as they drew closer to the Saimaa island of Lalli's former hometown, it was that Lalli drew closer to him at night. He slept curled up like a cat against Emil's stomach, and even though both of them had a blanket of their own, the closeness provided some comfortable warmth while the temperature dropped in the misty air creeping in from the lake at night. 

Sometimes Emil woke up feeling like the sun was rising in him, Lalli's warmth still lingering even if he had gotten up earlier in the never-quite-darkness, and was splashing himself down by the lakeshore, or building a fire to make tea, or sometimes standing still and high-up in the boughs of a pine on lookout with a frown on his face. Thus far they were in a cleansed zone that was protected by fences and palisades, but Emil remembered Tuuri talking about infection in non-immune settlements as something that could always happen, and Lalli's tension didn't fail to rub off on him. There might be trolls there, anywhere. 

If Emil ever was still asleep and Lalli wanted him to wake, it only ever took Lalli a hand on his shoulder (and one over his mouth that Emil pressed a kiss to once he got his bearings) to wake up. The rest of the team was snoring without concern - that night they spent on a fortified island settlement where nothing was likely to interrupt their sleep, even though the locals seemed badly rattled to have an entire group of strangers passing through not long after Onni had come this way, confirmed by one of the villagers living up on the hill. They wanted nothing more to do with them than that, especially after hearing they had a non-immune with them. Only a bribe of Mikkel's and a promise to stay out of the village proper had stopped the mayor of the place from locking Reynir in their makeshift quarantine station. 

Emil rose as quietly as he could, eyeing Sigrun with trepidation as she moved in her sleep and he froze, heart jumping, pack in hand after an imperious head-gesture on Lalli's part toward it. Lalli had shouldered his own bag, rolling up his blanket as he stood, while Emil merely slung his over his shoulder, and they snuck away into the trees by the water's edge, and the last stretch of path down to the boathouse. 

It was clear that they were leaving. For the noise as much as for the answer, he was afraid to ask why.

There was a guard - another night-scout, it seemed from her collar - lazily dangling her feet into the water from the dock, boots and rifle next to her, and sometimes swatting at the ever-present mosquitos Emil had tried and failed to learn to ignore. Instead of avoiding her and going into hiding until she left like they might have done if Emil had been leading their way, Lalli made a beeline for her, a now well-worn envelope in hand that he pulled several banknotes from. A curt exchange later, and she pulled her brown feet from the water, ran a hand through her short black curls, and motioned to one of the rowboats bobbing gently in the water. Of course - the one they had bought in the capital was far too large to easily row between the two of them.

Emil could barely follow the conversation before the young woman snatched the money from Lalli's hand, picked up her things, and left to let them depart. 

* 

It took two more days to get to Lalli's home island in Joutenvesi. Both Emil and Lalli were exhausted after the first of them, and Emil's arms hurt in a way that felt like someone had tried to yank all his joints out of their sockets, not least his shoulders. It made dragging Lalli through what had then felt like half of Denmark seem like a walk in the park, apart from the giant. And the Duskling horde. And the other giant that had ultimately saved their life. He desperately wanted to have Mikkel back, for rowing if nothing else, and Sigrun for protection. Striking out on their own kept him on constant alert, and it was _exhausting_ ; Emil wondered how Lalli bore all of it with the stoic quiet that he did so well, even though… something was roiling barely-disguised under the surface of Lalli's purported calm.

Luckily, they encountered nothing dangerous directly on their way. Beasts sometimes appeared on the shores, and at times ripples around the boat that were too large to be a fish made Lalli's head snap up, but by some miracle or other, they avoided attack. Apart from swans in flocks or pairs on the water between the islands, sometimes flying overhead with piping calls, there was hardly any life at all, it seemed. The inhabited islands here in the western reaches of Saimaa grew fewer and in-between; some had hilltop towns amid the trees, but appeared deserted. Lalli eyed them with a strange mix of suspicion and sadness, but said nothing about them; the day passed mostly in silence apart from the noises of nature around them and the splash of the oars as they took turns rowing.

For all that he had to be worn out, Lalli ate little that first evening, and slept less. Emil, on the verge of exhausted sleep, could feel him tossing and turning in place, before finally rising. Only the strenuous activity of the day that weighed down his eyelids with lead suddenly kept him from following Lalli. He wouldn't leave, Emil was sure of that; it'd make little sense to ask him to come and then run again. 

As he'd expected, Lalli was still there by morning, perched on a rock with his knees drawn up, and staring at the mirror-blank surface of the lake under sunrise, a pale disc just above the treeline east across the water. Emil paused before approaching him; there was tension in Lalli's every muscle, and Emil didn't mean to scare him, but it seemed that Lalli had noticed him before that, calling a soft "Emil," and reaching out behind him without turning. Emil stepped nearer, and Lalli's arm wrapped around his middle pulling him closer, a practiced gesture before Lalli leant back against his chest and sighed. 

"Today," he said in Swedish, "home-going." 

Emil nodded, glancing down at Lalli's upturned face. He was pale, and from Emil's perspective the dark circles under his eyes looked larger than they had any right to be. They probably were, he thought.

"Come on, Lalli, you should sleep before we get there, okay?" Emil replied. "I could use a few more hours myself." He slid his hands under Lalli's arms and pulled him up awkwardly, ignoring his protesting shoulders for the moment. Lalli followed him back to their sleeping spot, and slipped under the jumble of blankets by the burned-down fire while Emil took a moment to stoke it back to life. When Emil followed him, Lalli pulled him close again with an energy that he hadn't had a moment ago, fingers on the buttons of his shirt, and then on nothing but bare skin. 

*

The sex did nothing to make Emil any less tired, but Lalli at least slept after it, his body in Emil's arms for good this time, with no blankets or clothes between them. Emil's shoulders still ached, even in the pleasant afterward drowsiness, but it was more muted, and it put him at ease to see Lalli sleep soundly. Sleep wasn't long in coming for himself, either, but if he had hoped for one of their shared dreams to be able to ask Lalli what was going on, why they had left the others behind and what they were getting themselves into, he found himself in the same old tedium of Sofia setting the table in the Västerström dining room and bustling around just as his nanny had done in reality back then. 

Emil woke to an elbow in his stomach and Lalli jerking bolt-upright into bright summer daylight. 

While Emil still tried to get his bearings, Lalli lost no time digging for his discarded clothes in between the blankets, and shoving Emil's at him for good measure, before making for the rowboat they'd pulled up the shore the moment he was dressed, and fruitlessly trying to push-pull-shove it into the water on his own while Emil was still busy pulling on his underwear.

Something had disturbed Lalli greatly, that much was clear. Once they were on the water he kept making as much speed as he was able. Emil didn't have breath enough to ask him until they had to pause, still drifting forward with a little momentum, or perhaps they had struck a lucky current to ease their way. 

Lalli's face had become hard and closed-off by then, and he was muttering one of his incantations under his breath. Emil knew better than to interrupt magic when it happened - for a second he wanted to laugh at the thought of even believing in it in the first place - and he could have sworn that their boat picked up speed as if an invisible hand was pulling it along while neither of them did anything to propel them forwards. 

Emil meant to ask, but as soon as he opened his mouth, Lalli clapped a hand over his mouth. "Vellamo," he simply said. Emil didn't know who or what that was, and why it meant he had to be quiet, but after Lalli's hand stayed firmly where it was, he decided not to question it, or Lalli's sudden, inexplicable hurry. He'd have his reasons. After all, this was Lalli's family and Lalli's homeland, and Emi trusted Lalli. With his life, not only when he had to. 

Emil's questions stayed unanswered until the boat scraped up the pebble-and rock shore of another island sometime toward afternoon. Ahead sat a palisade much like on the island they'd left the others on, but this one was sunken half into the ground in places, toppled in others, and broken or burnt elsewhere. All of the damage looked old, though - it reminded Emil of a few buildings left standing in Östersund after the fire before they were torn down, their yards overgrown with the same plants that settled on recently-cleansed stretches of land. The same that were growing here. A young birch peeked through a gap in the palisade, a tumble of still-green raspberries climbed over the fence, nettles and ferns had grown between cracks in the greying wood, little yellow-lipped flowers dotted the ground, and the withered, stark pink candles of fireweed were already carrying first wooly seeds.

Lalli had hurried through one of the gaps, leaving the fern fronds waving in his wake. He was halfway up the lower slope of the hill by the time Emil had mastered the underbrush and gotten a look inside. It was unexpectedly sunny, the pine trees bare and burnt crownless like toothpicks stretching up into the blue sky. Moss and fungus crept up the blackened stems, and many had fallen into the tangle of new undergrowth. It was beautiful in its own way, but eerily still for all that. No birds, no small animals rustling around, not even any sign of beasts or trolls that might find shelter in the ruined log-houses up the hill. Not that Emil would have welcomed those - almost as little as he welcomed the sight of the stairs on the path ahead.

Lalli had almost reached the settlement by then. He was standing panting from the uphill race with his hands on his knees by the time Emil had reached him, and grabbed his shoulder to spin him around.

"What's going _on_?!" he demanded, the words coming out thin and wheezy. "You're being so weird, Lalli!" 

By now, Lalli was the picture of misery. He returned Emil's look quietly, then gave the barest indication of a shrug and a headshake, pulling on his hand, and Emil followed a few further steps up, onto the raised porch of the first of the abandoned buildings, and toward the door, into the dark interior under a partially fallen roof, where an overturned chair provided support for another tree sapling that had grown in a handful of soil and ash, and moss carpeted a table still set for a meal, but whatever had been on the plates and in the pots had rotted away long ago. It was clear that no one had lived in this village for a long time, and it wasn't at all what Emil had expected. When he'd learned that Onni had intended to go home to Saimaa, he'd pictured the capital or one of the smaller island towns that they'd passed through, not… this. 

What there was to come home to, what Onni could possibly want here, and what put Lalli so on edge, he still couldn't say. 

"I still don't understand," he said to Lalli, who was casting worried glances out of the door, his rifle at the ready. "Lalli, tell me what's happening - please?" 

Finally, Lalli turned to him. 

"Staying here," he said in Swedish, pointing to Emil and then at the floor. "I come back." Then he took a breath, and in the dim of the house, his eyes took on the sort of glow that meant magic, casting a blue shimmer over his tired face that washed out some of the weariness. "Danger, much. Staying here." The glow softened, momentarily. " _Please._ " 

Emil reached for him, but Lalli turned around and beelined out of the house, away from Emil's touch. The patter of his quiet steps over porch and path disappeared from earshot in no time at all.

Emil couldn't help feeling that Lalli had just said goodbye to him for good and that - no. He couldn't let Lalli go just like that. It felt like the mistake of a lifetime; he'd never forgive himself if something happened to Lalli and he could have prevented it. Maybe this made sense of why he'd brought none of the others - none of them, not just Emil, would want to let Lalli go alone. They'd come a long way from Sigrun holding him back even when she'd spotted Lalli's blood in the snow in a building full of troll husks. 

After a moment's thought, Emil set his pack down, pulled his rifle free, and left the house after Lalli. He wasn't just going to let Lalli go to… his death, probably, as much as the thought hurt. Whatever was wrong with Onni, if he was here at all, Emil would try fighting him even if he summoned another gigantic chanting eagle of fire - if what Tuuri had said after that fight was true. A bullet could still hurt him, if he hurt Lalli. 

Probably. Hopefully. 

Maybe the idea that he'd hurt someone for Lalli's sake should have fazed him more, but when Emil looked outside and took stock of his surroundings - burnt old forest and new growth all the way up the hill where the heart of the now-ruined village once must have been, a steep slope to the left of him near the stairs that fell all the way to the shore of Saimaa with no fence and some mature pines that'd survived the fire - he felt only grim determination. 

The light was softening; it should be close to evening, but the wide, cloudless sky wouldn't dim for hours yet. In spite of that, the top of the hill in between the burned trees now seemed to darken, as if the sun had set on the hilltop but nowhere else - and the figure of Lalli, made small by height and distance, was heading straight toward it. 

Lalli vanished into the wall of darkness, and not a moment later was flung back as if he had crashed into an invisible barrier. The darkness thickened and began to roil until it looked like a thunderstorm had descended from nowhere, clouds churning in a fishbowl threatening to burst. He could hear dim chanting. The hair on Emil's arm's stood on end, his eyes trained on Lalli on the ground, clapping his arms over his head as a rush and crackle in the air presaged - something. Lalli curled into a dot. 

Then the world shattered.

Lightning flickered and crashed out of the clear sky, for the briefest moments illuminating two figures within the sphere of clouds - one tall and shapeless as if wrapped in a billowing cloak, the other broad and sturdy - Onni's silhouette, Emil could easily tell. It took only the fraction of a second for the next smash of lightning, until Emil realized that Onni was the one commanding it against the other figure. 

He was not the one they'd have to fight. The rush of relief left Emil's ears ringing, or maybe that was the deafening whipsnap cracks of the lightning, followed by another and yet another, hurled at the shapeless creature until it shrunk back, the clouds projecting the shadow of a raised hand and clawed, grotesque fingers lifted to shield its face.

Whatever that other creature - person - was, that was the enemy, but Onni, it seemed, had beaten it into submission: The lightning eased into flickers. The rolling of the clouds calmed into mist, hiding what went on behind the barrier now. 

Adrenaline, and fear for Lalli, gave Emil's feet wings up the hill, letting him forget all the usual whining about stairs, still half-blind with afterimages of the lightning but taking the flat wooden steps in steep stretches two at a time, until he reached Lalli, who was now crouching on the ground outside the barrier close to the edge of the lakeside slope, wide-eyed and paler than Emil could ever remember seeing him, his skinny chest heaving and sinking, the throb of heartbeat in a vein at his throat rapid and afraid. 

"Grandma," he breathed, eyeing the mist as if he could see through it, while all was dark and impenetrable to Emil, until he could eventually make out a shape moving, tottering, swaying. Too tall for Onni. Shrouded in darkness, and a stark red glow where its face should be. Emil tried to grasp his rifle with suddenly sweat-slick fingers, raised it, fired before the thing had a chance to fully emerge. 

Beneath the ringing of the shot a snarl and wail sounded through the fog, high and piercing. Emil dropped his rifle and covered his ears, and the darkness dissipated as if one of Lalli's gods had lifted a finger from the scene. Onni, too, was gone, perhaps having made his escape while he could, thinking his opponent defeated? 

If so, he'd been wrong. The figure was still there, and it turned its gaze on them. _Grandma_ , Lalli had said, if Emil could trust his Finnish this moment. Because - 

\- its look seared him. 

It was everything terrible - Emil's father's misery about him, the ridicule of his classmates, the hatred and envy of other cadets at the Academy, every troll he'd ever faced magnified thousandfold into physical sensation ripping through his body with teeth of fire. 

Death bearing down on him. 

Away. Just away. 

Emil tried to reel to his feet, and then, with a strangled cry, Lalli threw himself at him, shielding Emil with his body even as they teetered to the edge of the open space, and Lalli's face twisted in something that might be agony - or, Emil thought as his brain tried to sort through the jumble of things happening too much too fast, hatred. He was hissing something - yelling, really. Emil saw his lips move, even if the meaning never became clear, they teetered to a halt, Lalli's hands rested on his chest for the fraction of a second, then _pushed_. 

The ground gave way beneath Emil, the edge of the slope crumbling under his boots into sand and pebbles, and Emil fell, reaching out for Lalli's slumping form. Even then he had his hands uplifted to ward off the shrouded figure, and Emil grasped only Lalli's rifle that slipped easily from his shoulder. He took it down with him even as he tipped backward down the hill. 

*

Emil came to in the chill hours after sunset, lying in the mud at the edge of the water, and promptly was sick to his stomach. When he was done, thanking his lucky stars that all that came out was foam and bile, he rinsed his mouth with a handful of lake water and wished he hadn't done that as the bitter taste of peat flooded his tongue and made him retch more. He was still spitting absently as he checked himself for cuts and bruises, and worse. His left leg lay under him, twisted awfully at the knee, and mostly numb from the cold of the water. It felt easier to take stock of the spots on him that weren't hurt, or covered in bumpy mosquito bites that itched miserably in time with his throbbing head in the too-bright night. 

Worst of all, he was covered in mud from hair to toes, and miles upon miles from any civilized person who even knew an intelligible word for 'shower'.

Apart from - 

Emil's blood froze as the memories took over. None of his injuries seemed so bad now that he remembered - 

_Lalli._

Lalli's rifle lay a little upslope, the strap tangled in a cluster of blueberry bushes. That could only mean… Lalli must still be up in the village. If he were in any shape to come looking for Emil… he would have. He'd never have left his rifle unattended. He'd not have left _Emil_ unattended. 

Emil felt sick again, both worry and pain claiming their due of him as he pulled himself into a sitting position, grabbing handfuls of grasses by the lakeshore, and then righted his left leg. The pain almost blinded him again as sure as the lightning had. 

It wasn't just the physical parts of him that hurt, though. He remembered Lalli pushing him away down the slope. The situation replayed itself in the flashes of light behind his eyes, the feeling of Lalli's bony hands against his chest, the odd strength bursting from Lalli's skinny body, the way the edge of the slope was crumbling under his boots the drawn-out second before he fell. 

Lalli's hissing, his angry expression. Of course now was the time to replay the things he had picked up then, but not clearly understood. He knew the words because Lalli had taught him those during the early leg of their boat trip into the western reaches of Saimaa, still together with the group, and Emil had laughed so much to hear all sorts of Finnish profanity. It no longer made him laugh, hearing a specific phrase repeated in his head now.

_Piss off, asshole!_

Emil's face set against the tears that threatened to choke him, suddenly. He noticed he was shivering in his wet clothes and mud-plastered hair. He wanted nothing more than a fire, dry clothes, and most of all, in spite of it all, for Lalli to be okay.

He sort of hated him that moment, but - Lalli was Lalli. There usually was a reason for what he did. If it turned out they had broken up for good, he could still be angry. Until then, Emil could be the bigger person and find him first. 

After a long and painful struggle up the slope that took the better part of the remaining night, Emil found Lalli lying where the creature had felled him, but the creature itself seemed gone. Even from a distance, Emil could see that he was breathing only shallowly, and there was blood crusted around his nostrils. The whole scene was devastatingly familiar; Emil felt his stomach lurch in time with the throbbing in his leg. 

"I can't do this again," Emil said and let himself collapse next to Lalli, gathering his head into his lap to half-curl around him. "How do I row you back to the capital if I don't even know how to ask for the way? And with a bum leg at that?" 

Lalli, of course, made no answer. 

*

Lalli was already sitting at the table when Emil came into his dream. 

Sleep had been long in coming in the waking world. Sitting and shivering in his wet clothes in the bleak hours before morning was breathlessly miserable, Emil's leg hurt like hell and he was too afraid of the shrouded figure reappearing to let his eyes rest. They roved instead, over shadows and half-burned buildings and the wide stretch of water below on his left, and always back to Lalli's slack face, until tiredness eventually pulled him under. 

Seeing Lalli with an enormous piece of cake in front of him made Emil feel like an intruder into his own mind, and that in turn made him snort; it was fair to say that Lalli was a part of him for better or worse, and most of all he felt a deep, aching, sweet rush of relief that Lalli was not truly gone. 

His pain carried over into his dream. He limped to the table and eased himself down in a chair next to Lalli. Lalli was his friend - boyfriend even, maybe. Even though neither of them had made it clear in words before, it was what Emil liked to believe, and liked to believe Lalli also thought. 

It was only fair that Lalli gave him a guilty, helpless look, and slunk aside, his shoulders hunched up - but not so far that Emil couldn't reach him - and began shovelling the cake into his mouth in exaggerated bites. 

"Lalli," Emil said softly, watching while Lalli cleared his plate in record time, and then reached for the cake for another piece. "Talk to me, please." He curled his hand around Lalli's atop the cake lifter, and squeezed gently.

Lalli remained stubbornly silent a moment longer, but his eyes were bright with tears, his shoulders tense and his expression so still and taut that Emil feared his face might snap. Lalli clapped his hands over his head.

Then, something in him, everything, relaxed enough in him for tears, and Lalli of all people began to cry, flinging himself at Emil and holding on like a vice. He said nothing. There wasn't breath enough between the keening, open-mouthed noises against Emil's chest that sent shivers racing down Emil's spine. Lalli sounded barely human, a wounded animal, if even that, and all Emil could do was hold Lalli in turn and not let go. 

Eventually, he calmed into panting breaths and went limp against Emil's body, slipping half to the floor and resting his forehead against Emil's knees. Emil picked Lalli up as best he could then, a support more than anything else, and somehow they staggered the few steps to the sofa together, where Emil pulled off Lalli's fur cloak and helped him huddle under it, much as a long time ago in the front seat of the cat-tank in Copenhagen. 

"It's okay, you don't have to talk," Emil said eventually, reaching to brush a few tousled strands of hair from Lalli's sweat-damp forehead, tentatively, to see if Lalli allowed the touch. He did, even leaning in now that his crying spell had passed, even if his movements remained sluggish and with none of his usual easy grace. 

Emil cupped Lalli's face, his thumb trailing circles over one cheekbone. "It's okay. I'm not angry with you, Lalli, but I don't understand, I don't -" 

Lalli kissed him silent before he could get out any more of the question, but when Emil reached to reciprocate and tried to fumble open the clasp at Lalli's collar, Lalli brushed his hand away. "No," he said heavily, pulling back entirely from the kiss and huddling back under his cloak to lapse once again into quiet.

Emil settled for watching the fire in Östersund eating away at the town outside the window, while Lalli sat in silence with his knees drawn up. 

*

A sharp pain in his hurt leg jolted Emil back into waking, leaving Lalli dozing on the sofa in his dream. Lalli lay half on top of him, still as limp as the night before. He shook Lalli's shoulder carefully, but didn't really expect anything, and wasn't surprised when neither Lalli's body nor Lalli's soul taking refuge with him made a response. 

"Okay," Emil said, clambering to his feet with difficulty. His knee protested even before he put any weight on it, and that alone was enough for Emil to almost lose heart before he dragged himself to one of the thickets of new growth everywhere, and hacked away with his knife at a young birch forking into a sturdy Y at the top. It'd have to make do as a makeshift cane to help him move, and eventually, so out of breath that black spots flickered in front of Emil's vision, the tree came away. 

The next issue - food. Emil wasn't expecting to find anything in the burnt-out houses. Even if the people here had had canned goods, they'd probably been cooked, burst and spoiled in the fire, so he went searching for berries instead, at last finding a growth of blueberries in a spot of sunshine that he could easily reach and ate until his fingers - and probably his mouth - were mottled purple, his hair finally drying into mud-caked, itching tangles, but he didn't trust himself to make the way down to the lake to wash, and then have the strength to climb back up to Lalli. Instead, he gathered several handfuls of the berries into his equally stiff, mud-caked shirt, and made his way back to Lalli to squash the berries between his lips one by one. Even if he couldn't eat or drink in his state, maybe a little of the berry juice might make it to Lalli's stomach in the end, and give him a little of his strength back to wake up. 

Eventually, a noise of protest inside Emil's head gave him pause. Lalli was awake, and he sounded disgusted. "I _hate_ blueberries!" 

Emil couldn't help a short, relieved laugh. "I'm sorry, that's all I found! Can you taste them?" 

"... no." 

Emil snorted again, even if that probably wasn't great news. "Maybe… just don't look? You could… tell me what happened last night. If you can," he added hastily when there was a wave of unease radiating from Lalli at the prospect. "But I don't understand." 

A spell of silence followed, but Lalli was watchful and alert, the same itching, unreal feeling as the first time Lalli had looked out through his eyes. "... my grandmother. Kade."

"Kade? Is that her name?" Emil asked.

"Her name is… _was_ … Ensi. A kade is a… mage. A turned mage," Lalli eventually added, forming the words carefully. There was a feeling of unease to them, of… envy, as if that came with the word, making the meaning far clearer than Lalli's voice had, and something crooked and corrupted and trollish, like the screaming that pierced from any radio in the Silent World at times, or the voice out of that attic in Denmark that had nearly lured him to his death before Lalli had interfered. 

Emil shuddered and looked around. "It is not here now," Lalli said. "You hurt it, weakened it, so I could banish it, for a little while, but we need to go soon. It is looking for us - for me and Onni. Always. Since we escaped it with Tuuri and came to Keuruu. But it is not here now. Onni wanted to…" A shrug. "I don't know. Blind it. Probably. With the lightning." 

"Blind it?" Emil's eyes went to the patches of scorched ground not far from him that still bore the signs of the lightning strikes of the previous day. "Why?" 

"A kade works their magic through its eyes and gaze. It is evil. That is why…" 

"... why you pushed me down the hill?" 

"I couldn't let it kill you. I couldn't let it think that... " Lalli lapsed into silence once again, stubbornly this time. In the end, when Emil, heart thumping, had almost given up on a reply, Lalli continued, "We hide our luck. You. We pretend we don't care, cause anyone can be a kade." 

Understanding dawned on Emil then - the insult, Lalli's apparent anger. Any lingering pain around it evaporated and left Emil strangely light-headed, even as Lalli continued talking after a brief pause.

"Some people who are kateet aren't mages, they're harmless if you have a luonto. Just envious people with a little power. Maybe they can make people - friends - fight. But a mage… it can kill with a look. It can break down gates. It can command trolls. It can _feed_ from trolls, their magic, their life force, their hate for us. It becomes more like a troll. It can bring disease." 

Lalli's voice sounded very small now, and on impulse, Emil cradled his fragile body closer against his own.

"Even the Rash. That is what happened here." 

*

Emil had no idea how he made it to the house where they'd left their supplies, and then through the fallen palisade dragging Lalli after him and his leg not killing him, before they finally reached the boat. After all the explanations, Emil had the distinct sense that Lalli had gone back to doze or even sleep in his mind; he didn't react to any of Emil's questions, out-loud or thought only. Misery flowed off him in waves, and whatever dream he was caught in… it couldn't be a good one; occasionally a quiet whimper pierced Emil's reverie as they drifted out onto the relative safety and quiet of the lake. 

He didn't have the strength to row, so he curled up in the bottom of the boat with Lalli's body, occasionally reaching to stroke his hair, feel his pulse, make him more comfortable if that even was possible. He pulled the oars in and spread a blanket over them like a makeshift tarp, and trusted that the current, slight as it was, would eventually carry them somewhere safe. Anywhere safer than Lalli's former home.

There still was so much he didn't understand and that he couldn't piece together - why Lalli's grandmother had turned into a monster, what had led her to be looking for Onni and Lalli, what she'd do to them if she found them, and where Onni was in the first place, what had happened to Lalli, and whether he'd ever recover. Why they'd had to face her alone, and how the rest of the team was. 

Fretting over all that eventually lulled Emil into an uneasy sleep, but he didn't surface into his own dream haven. He found himself in a rocky area somewhere by the lake, alive with scents and sound, and cool, clear water that begged him to swim - if it weren't for Lalli perched on the rocks by the water's edge, his eyes trained fixedly on a rock wall, where an immense beast with shoveled antlers - a deer, a moose? Emil wasn't sure - was twisted into the rocks as if it had grown there in the perverse imitation of a tree clinging to life. 

It was dead, though, and Lalli's face set in a sharp frown as he regarded it. 

"Where are we?" asked Emil. "Why is it… like this?" 

"My grandmother. Her luonto was - is - _was_ a moose. She likes to feed from them. It is a sign she was here. I saw this during scouting, our camp was up there," Lalli said and pointed up a rock wall to a piece of forest that seemed vaguely familiar to Emil from before they'd split from the rest of the team. "I thought that Onni might go after her - it. And the other way around. I looked for signs." 

"Where is Onni now?" Emil asked. "It's because of him we're here, shouldn't we look for him?" 

Lalli shrugged. "I know where he wants to go. With grandma. I know what his plan is, but not where he is now that he found her. But he isn't stupid. He'll take care of himself. We just have to go the same direction."

"Where?" Emil asked. 

"North," Lalli said irritably. "As far north as we can go. He'll lure her to Tuonela and trade her for Tuuri." 

"Shouldn't we - " Emil meant to ask _\- find help first_ , but his astonishment at the plan burst the dream like a soap bubble, and he tumbled into a seat at the dining room table as if he'd never been anywhere else. Lalli had rolled into a ball under his fur cloak on the sofa, not even stirring when Emil gently shook his shoulder. 

*

Instead, waking up eventually, Emil made his way as faithfully north as he could. In the labyrinth of wood and lakes that they were drifting through, the compass in Emil's pack was none too helpful, because it gave him little help navigating anywhere except a straight way, and didn't account for dead ends where the lake became a swamp, or so shallow that the belly of the boat scraped over the rocks at the bottom, or shoreline only as far as the eye could see. 

Even eating sparingly, their provisions were running low after a couple of days, and he didn't dare stop at any of the few in-between settlements for fear of setting Ensi on them. Emil unsuccessfully tried both hunting and fishing, but no game appeared, and even though he caught a few fish, they were for the most part no longer than his little finger, and he tossed them back into the water in disgust. Lalli's body grew worryingly thin even as he remained solidly locked in deep unconsciousness, and Emil found him asleep and unresponsive in his dream more often than not, too, looking drawn and pale even there. 

With not much else to do but row and try to ignore the ever-present pain in his leg - Emil thought it must be healing wrong if it was healing at all - guilt and sadness weren't long in coming. Lalli had been _right_ calling him an idiot, he should have listened and stayed behind hidden in the house while Lalli tried to support Onni. Emil should never have interfered in anything magic. He was desperately afraid of looking up at some shoreline not far away and seeing Ensi standing there, the terrible burn of her gaze trained onto him - or not even see her at all before she found and killed him. If all it took was a look - Emil huddled into the blanket he'd started pulling up to cocoon himself even as a heatwave rolled across the lake - how could he defend himself against that? Lalli at least remained hidden in the boat, but if Emil died… where'd he find shelter? Would he be cast adrift into the dream sea that Lalli had come from, or go back to his own dreamspace, or die with him? 

He'd have to hope that Ensi was following Onni, not them, but when Emil ran the boat aground on the shore of yet another island and found the grass dotted in the stiff bodies of small birds with no apparent sign of injury, he knew their luck was close to running out.

* 

"I just have to rest," Lalli muttered. The sliver of silver that was his iris trained on Emil from under a half-closed lid. He seemed barely conscious or lucid at all, and no matter if Emil shook him like a doll, he wouldn't wake when, normally, Lalli might have clawed his eyes out for being handled like this. 

In the waking world, Emil had hastily pulled the boat off into the lake and found a hidden cove with a slim stretch of pebbly beach before somehow managing to overturn the boat onto the rocks so they could both hide underneath it and still have a little bit of air to breathe. It wasn't hard to fall asleep - Emil was bone-tired and hurt into the littlest part of his body, but seeing Lalli so unresponsive, he nearly fretted himself back awake, the borders of his dream blurring in impending waking. It took an effort to stay asleep, cradle Lalli close to him, and anchor himself in the dream.

"She almost found us," he pleaded. "Lalli, please help me." 

Lalli's head lolled to the side in something that was meant to be a headshake, perhaps; the words that followed came slurred against Emil's ear. "'m too tired. My luonto is gone. 't took the damage. Hurt." 

By now Emil knew a little of what that meant. It had been another thing Lalli had taught him before, talking about Finnish souls one glorious night they'd stolen away into a sauna in one of the immune settlements early on the trip, and then washing the sweat off each other in a fenced-off bay of the lake, and Lalli had illustrated and explained about souls as well as he could as they lay curled around each other in the bright night after. 

He missed that moment with a pang now, remembering Lalli's fingers tracing the shape of some large cat into the ground. His nature. Emil had laughed fondly, not sure how much of it was nonsense, although a cat of some sort - a wildcat, maybe? - seemed to fit Lalli in all his easy grace and mannerisms, his silent footfalls, his attentive eyes. 

If all that was gone, a part of himself was missing. If it was _hurt_ … 

No wonder, then, that he was so exhausted, that he wouldn't wake, that his head rolled against Emil's shoulder now as he lapsed back into sleep without making any more answers. "Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Emil asked. "What do I do now? _Lalli?!_ " 

In the rush of panic, waking took him.

*

If he did what he had considered a few times, Lalli might never forgive him, if he survived. Onni would never forgive him. He might never even forgive himself for the sake of those two, but he needed a healer for Lalli, desperately, he needed food and a doctor for himself, and he could do none of it with Ensi on the prowl nearby. 

He knew she could be hurt with a gunshot wound. If he was lucky, with the element of surprise on his side and managed to catch the woman who had taught Lalli everything from scouting to magic at unawares, in itself the slimmest of odds… he might manage to kill her. 

It'd rob Onni and Lalli of the chance to have Tuuri back, their family complete again, or as complete as it could still be. 

Emil reached for Lalli's rifle, his fingers slipping over the makeshift tape holding it together. He'd run out of ammunition for his own; if it was going to be anything, it was this. He checked on Lalli's shallow breathing, his weak heartbeat in a practiced and often-repeated motion, and fought down the feeling of being completely and utterly alone apart from a hostile creature that wanted him and Lalli dead. 

The pebbles rattled under him as he squeezed out from underneath the boat, trusting that Lalli still had to be alive when he came back. If he came back. 

Then Emil set off along the shore and toward the dead birds, to find Ensi, and end her. 

*

She spoke Swedish. 

Emil was crouching behind a large granite boulder, blessedly hidden from view, but something in the clearing told him he was not alone - perhaps the way everything that was alive hushed in Ensi's presence, and even the air quieted its breath of wind. Lalli had told him that everything had a spirit, but right now, in the absence of… something... while Ensi stood there, he almost believed it. 

"I know you are here, little Swede," she said, in a voice that might be Lalli's if he were a woman almost a century old, in some terrible bond with the Rash to stay alive. "I know what you want. I know what your plan is. I know about you, and my grandson. He tried so hard to hide it that he told me everything pushing you to safety. Too bad that he will never do anything ever again very soon now..." 

There was some mocking sweetness in her cadence of the thick Finnish staccato, and it didn't fail to freeze Emil to his core; he bit down on his lips and tasted blood to keep from making a reply or any sound at all that might give his position away. 

She hadn't seen him yet. 

If she came for him, he'd be ready. 

His finger lay on the trigger, the barrel of Lalli's gun aimed upward. Emil listened, suddenly grateful for the acute silence that let him hear every rustle of grass and fabric, every laboured breath as she drew closer to his hiding place. 

The rush and impact of something sharp and heavy. The gurgle of pain and blood that followed.

The utter quiet dispersing suddenly into a riot of the sounds of nature. 

Emil finally dared to look. 

For all his resolve, he had forgotten about Onni. Onni, who carried a spear. Onni who had been his grandmother's bait as much her pursuer, it seemed. Now, his grandmother's end. 

Emil climbed from his hiding place, skirting around the body in the grass, fallen face-first onto the ground, Onni's spear protruding from between her shoulder blades. The beat of swan wings overhead made Onni look up, but Emil couldn't bear any more delay. Even as Onni stood frozen, his eyes trained on the sky with an unreadable, even forbidding expression, Emil grabbed Onni's hand, pulling insistently. 

Onni was another mage. He'd always come to their help. He'd know what to do.

"Lalli," Emil said, trying to keep his voice from shaking and the tears of unexpected relief from falling as he limped as quickly as his leg allowed toward the hidden landing spot of their boat, pulling Onni along after him. "Lalli. Please." 

* 

There was a lynx by the window. 

Emil's stomach lurched in a way he failed to explain. 

It wasn't just that there was a large, spectral, silvery cat making bounding leaps through the snow that reached up to its bony ribcage underneath the spotted fur. It wasn't just that the lynx jumped up, pressing snowshoe paws against the window making low, hoarse yelps. 

It was that on the sofa, Lalli stirred into awareness. 

Emil threw the window open and slid back down onto the sofa. 

The lynx bounded in in one leap, shook the snow from its fur onto the expensive carpets on the floor, and made for Lalli on the sofa, who had just struggled into a sitting position, blinking like an owl in the daylight, looked at Emil with a soft, uncharacteristic fondness on his face, and reached for the lynx, who melded back into Lalli in a glow of light.

* * *

Emil leaned back in the steaming tub of water, sighing contentedly. It was, all things considered, only a large wooden bucket, but it felt the best he had ever felt - or at least, in a very long time even if they had probably set out to the lake from the capital no more than three weeks ago. 

The constant worry for Lalli had made it feel like a century. 

There still were so many questions that Emil wanted answers to, but it had only been three days since Onni had pointed Lalli's luonto back to him, and, a little later, even come to fetch Lalli from Emil's dreamspace into his own.

Emil missed Lalli almost as soon as he was gone. Even while Lalli had been unresponsive and near death, there had always been a presence there that faded almost immediately as soon as Lalli left him to the usual spin of it, and too much cake for him to eat in the course of a dream. 

Even so, Lalli had woken up in the waking world shortly after, and Emil had managed to muster his last resorts of strength to row them back to the last settlement they'd passed. This far away from civilization, anyone able to bring a good story was accepted in, as long as they were immune, and even though they had no showers, one look at Emil's pitiful, still mud-flecked state, his limping, and Lalli's general bedraggled look had been enough for either pity or amusement and the gracious offer of tubs of hot water and a place for the night. 

They'd washed up in one tub first, with Lalli helping Emil diligently clean away the dirt that remained from his tumble into the lake, cataloguing scrapes and now faded-yellow bruises with knitted eyebrows as he checked for signs of infection and rinsed off scabs and dried blood. 

It felt good to be so pampered, and before too long, Emil returned the favour and pulled a clean Lalli into the other tub to settle against his chest. There was room enough for both of them, and Emil felt the muscles in his shoulders and arms unknotting as he rested, and eventually slipped into sleep, to come to in a dream much like their waking circumstances - a hot tub of water, and the promise of privacy and a bed for him and Lalli later. 

A question that hung in Emil's mind remained, beyond so much that he still wanted to ask. How Ensi had become that way remained a mystery, with Lalli only saying that she had made a terrible mistake. Why she had hunted them - plain and simple envy that her family continued to live, human and not forced to feed on trolls for a desperate semblance of life. What would happen now - Onni had met with Reynir in the dreamspace, and they'd meet in a few day's time in one of the larger immune towns where the rest of them had washed up after losing Lalli and Emil's trail on the lake. Onni had already gone ahead.

"What are we going to do next?" Emil asked. 

"Rest. See to your leg. Meet up with the rest of them," Lalli said in a low voice after a moment's consideration. "Go north. Find another way." 

He settled more comfortably against Emil and closed his eyes, a half-smile on his face as he looped an arm around him to bring them a little closer together still, skin against skin in the clean, warm water. His other hand dropped lower, fingers stroking playfully until Emil hissed and arched in pleasure. 

"This is what you call resting?"

"Mmmm." 

Emil laughed softly. "I like it." He shifted slightly in Lalli's grasp, tipping his head down to look at him, and Lalli met his gaze, unwavering, for one final question. "Why did you want me there?" 

"Silly," Lalli said with fondness. "I knew you'd always take me in."

**Author's Note:**

> While the kade, someone generally driven to mental illness and evil through envy and jealousy is a figure from Finnish mythology/folklore, and I have the lovely Laufey to thank for all the help regarding the real-world tradition, the embellishments around trolls to fit them into the SSSS framework a bit better are entirely mine. 
> 
> Many thanks to Yuu for his angelic patience betaing this, and to Kira for her watchful eyes!


End file.
